Poignant Pink Floyd for these times.

#returnkilmar

open.spotify.com/track/7KA6U0...

Creating a words per day chart has been a real game changer for my motivation. Feeling pretty good about the progress the past week.

Trying to be okay with small progress. At least it's something, right?

Unexpected writing is the best. Worked out a whole new realm that provides a ton of depth and potential for my book.

Can we skip bringing back the 30s and 40s and bring back the 60s and 70s instead?

My sole comforting thought is that the Earth will spin, the Sun will rise, life will return some day. It's such an interesting view to have as a human, the only species to ever really contemplate these things.

We really are just at the very beginning of what life means in this universe.

A poem, "Inner Odyssey".

One of the most interesting parts of starting to write more is how much I use writing to help myself understand and process what's going on in my head. I neglected to even try for so long.

I bought an old book at a yard sale a long time ago. It is from 1829 and was considered the culmination of knowledge on many subjects for the time. Now it is sitting on my desk, under a device that can tell me anything I ever want to know. Fascinating to think of the stories this book could tell.

Getting older, I feel less social. It's not that I don't want to spend time with others, I just feel like I need more time with me.

I think we tend to forget that the present is future's history. We are making it, by action or inaction.

Writers... do you share excerpts of what you write on here? Why or why not?

Are all novelists excited and surprised to find out what happens in your own stories? Like when a character unexpectedly develops a random trait or passion or some twist in the plot?

"Don't accept that what's happening
Is just a case of others' suffering
Or you'll find that you're joining in
The turning away

It's a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it's shroud
Over all we have known."

open.spotify.com/track/7KA6U0...

Researching WW1 for a story I discovered a poet I had never read, Siegfried Sassoon. A bit dark, but refreshingly honest.

The thing about trying to be a writer for me is the crazy times my brain decides it wants to write.

Oh, it's 3am and you're trying to sleep? Nope, this is how the climactic battle goes.

You're having dinner with your family? Nope, here's the full backstory for character that has 1 line.

New word I learned today:

chaordic
/ keɪˈɔːdɪk /
adjective
(of a system, organization, or natural process) governed by or combining elements of both chaos and order.

Oddly fitting for my work style.

ChatGPT has been instrumental in researching the topics I am writing about. What would have taken hours and days to research takes minutes. It has single handedly allowed me to get the story I have been trying to tell for years out of my head.

Probably my all-time favorite poem is "The Double Life" by Don Blanding.